Silver Smile
by genkakusalvo
Summary: A story about Wonderweiss, Gin, and why they hate each other. Rated T just to be safe and for general depressing and some philosophical content.


Silver Smile, a _Bleach _fan fiction

There was nothing to play with in a palace built for empty beings, reflected Wonderweiss Margera. His hands reached absently up to his wavy blond hair, stroking it into even crazier shapes. They were held at an angle, as if dangling off of his arms with surprisingly little energy invested in the motion. The limp fingers traced a bone fragment of an exoskeleton-like helmet. Only this piece, crowning his head and curving gently to its shape, remained from what he had once had. Back when his body was an exoskeleton and when the hole through his chest was even larger than it was at the present time. The hole was a phenomenon in itself; sometimes black and opaque and other times completely transparent. In any case, there was nothing there, and any illusion that it was a black circle on his skin was explained away by the fact that, though the front of his flowing white tunic was cut to accommodate the hole, the back was not. No light shone through the hole, something Wonderweiss found frightening whenever he looked into a mirror. When once has become accustomed to something, seeing it changed is never easy to accept. Wonderweiss had taken to avoiding any and all mirrors.

His purple eyes shifted from side to side, eyelids half obscuring his pupils and giving him a demonic, though somewhat sleepy glare. His mouth was left open, allowing air to escape with a wet hiss, a moaning sound that was utterly inhuman. He was watching, not wanting anything to sneak up on him through the white, windowless hallways, lacking any sort of decoration or furniture. Only endless rows of doors, in which were housed monstrosities Wonderweiss dared not think of, for he would have nightmares. They walked around him occasionally, staring down with a special sort of loathing that is reserved for people who are different, inadequate, lesser than oneself. They flaunted who they were, and all of the lips he saw were twisted in cocky smirks, each eye filled with transparent pride, each step affirming that they at least were not crippled as he was.

He was but a boy living in a castle of the damned. And he was anything but what they thought he was. Autistic, maybe. That was plain to see. The lack of verbal communication, rather random hisses that his muscles rather than his mind dreamed up and enacted. The odd habits, fascinations with objects and small things, never large, sometimes rocks and strange centipedes that lived in the desert outside, and once in a different, sunlit world, an insect with wings like glass and wonderful, spherical eyes. And yet, he was not what they thought he was. No, not at all.

He was empty. They were all holes, it seemed, dug in the dirt of corruption and sin. As they died, rather than commit themselves to purification and rise to heaven, they had chosen to wallow in their pain and anger and dig their own graves. The ones that walked above him had nothing but shallow graves. His was deep, deeper than any other, dug down over the course of consuming other holes, other graves, tunneling through the dirt closer to the core. And when he finally reached it, expecting lava and rock under pressure enough to keep it solid at heats at which it should have liquefied, he found nothing, nothing but an emptiness of a never ending hole. The ones who looked at him with scorn were still in the midst of the heat and the promise of the core, the end of their journey of never ending consumption, that would maybe fill the holes in their souls. They were fools. Emptiness could never fill a hole. And he was emptiness personified.

In a human, the autism would have been nothing but a mental problem, the soul untouched and the brain functioning as it would, just with a few modifications. But he was no human, and he had no mental disorder. He was not truly autistic in the sense that it was used in humans. His mannerisms were the result of a soul that was stronger than the mind that controlled it, and a mind stronger than the soul it inhabited. Inside the emptiness, the nothingness, contradictions like that made sense. Insanity was sanity, his only sanity. The consumption had left him with terrible power, the physical strength to crush any of the ones who looked down on him. (They still frightened him, though. Deep down he was frightened of his own emptiness, and theirs was even more terrifying, because he at least had some control over his own. In truth, he had long since relinquished his control, back when he chose the path of the damned.) His mind had the strength to eat its way through others just as empty, just as intelligent, and subjugate and eat and digest their intelligence to serve his own.

He was just a child, newborn and unable to know just what his new body could do. And so he floundered around and tested it, looked around for something that the emptiness could enjoy (though it never did), while they laughed.

There was an exception, as there always was. A man, with brown skin and hair pulled back in wormy braids, held together with a semblance of order but really relishing their crazy effect. He was blind, wearing nothing but a glass plate over eyes white as the walls all around Wonderweiss. And Wonderweiss loved him more than was possible.

He was full. Long ago, it seemed something had torn a hole in him, and the marks were still there, but he had filled it with fresh soil and covered it up. Moreover, he built a castle on that hole, soaring into the sky and always towards the light. The man was not the strongest around, Wonderweiss knew. There was the brown-haired man who radiated nothing but lust for power. A strong man, who encouraged all to obey, even some who approached Wonderweiss in power. And of course the Other.

The man's name was Kaname Tousen. Where Wonderweiss saw nothing but darkness, Tousen could see nothing but light. Maybe that was why he had gone blind. He basked in that light, just as Wonderweiss fell on into his bottomless hole of madness. He was sane, so sane that he cut through to the point of insanity. And Wonderweiss was sane in that there was no sanity left in his mind. They were yin and yang. Friends, as well.

Steps behind, and Wonderweiss turned. The Other was there, walking towards him with that smile. The Other was indefinable in Wonderweiss's empty world. He was nothing but a façade, with nothing behind it. The façade was the man himself, his entire being, a fake creation, a mask with no one behind. And this was something that Wonderweiss found terrifying. Wonderweiss might know how an empty soul would behave by looking at his own. And he could discover what a full soul would do by looking at Tousen. But this man was just nothing but something at the same time. It was impossible, even in Wonderweiss's mad world, because it did not make sense in that his emptiness was not born of itself (as a hollow) and neither was his fullness born from his emptiness (as Wonderweiss was whole as an empty being).

Gin Ichimaru was what Tousen called the man. He slunk up to Wonderweiss, taking soft steps and leading with his light, soft silver-haired head, eyes shut and mouth splitting his face in an insane parody of a smile. He put a hand, white as milk, onto Wonderweiss's blond head and rubbed it in a strange, affectionate gesture. He asked in a slithering voice how Wonderweiss was doing and smirked when the boy tried to make a word and failed. That was just not friendly, the Other chastised. He enjoyed Wonderweiss's fear, lapped it up like a cat at the milk bowl.

Wonderweiss knocked his hand aside, hissing, head leaning up to stare at the other with a danger in the now widened eyes. An angry animal ready to tear out the throat of its hunter. The Other just smiled down at the boy, complaining that he was being quite rude and, would he like to have a little friendly conversation? A hiss was all he received in return.

Would he speak? Would he come with the Other for a spot of entertainment, maybe a diverting game? But this was already a game, and Wonderweiss was determined not to lose. Somewhere in his mind lurked the hunter that had eaten thousands of souls. When he assumed this humanlike form and sealed away his more savage nature in the broadsword he carried on his back, the inane desire to destroy everything in his path (after looking for something interesting, of course, and examining that to the fullest) had dulled into the back of his mind. Now it surfaced. If the Other would not yield to his mind, then he would force him to.

Gin sensed a threat and tensed, hand moving by muscle memory to the short sword in the folds of his white cloak. He was still grinning. Wonderweiss lips turned from soft and aimless to snarling. Then the boy was gone.

The attack was swift beyond Gin's comprehension. A lock of hair fell from his head, split in two. Gin drew his sword to discover that the blade had been sheared off at the hilt and remained inside the sheath. Now the smile left his face, the mask dropped to reveal a new one behind it, this one of anger. He had been bested by a child. No, he had been bested by the emptiness he had seen in those purple eyes. Those eyes frightened him, a consciousness vast and filled with nothing but evil. Those eyes saw right through his fragile soul. Those eyes saw him as their delicious food. He had always hated that boy, hated the fear he felt whenever in his company.

He stalked off through the white hallways, while Wonderweiss curled up and slept, content and secure in Tousen's lap as the man stroked his hair. The weak man and the empty child had a bond of sorts. Not that Gin's silver smile would ever give it away. That silver smile that held both of their fear, bound inside its unbreakable deception.


End file.
